Government departments failed to surrender nearly Rs 4,000 crore unspent money in the 2021-22 fiscal, a Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report has found.
According to the state finance audit report of the CAG for the financial year ended March 2022 tabled in the Legislature on Tuesday, there was unutilised money amounting to Rs 10,849 crore by the end of the 2021-22 fiscal.
For, as against a budgetary provision of Rs 2.93 lakh crore, the expenditure incurred was Rs 2.82 lakh crore, with about 4% of the money having gone unutilised.
While as per norms, the departments are required to surrender the unspent money to the finance department, only Rs 5,998 crore, which is 55% of the unspent money, was surrendered, the report stated.
The report showed that there were 25 cases of unspent provisions where each exceeded Rs 100 crore. Large unspent provisions (more than Rs 500 crore) were found in home and transport, rural development, panchayat raj, revenue, education, health and family welfare departments. The departments also failed to provide appropriate reasons for these unspent expenditure, the report said.
Further, even though as per norms departments are required to plan expenditure properly and distribute it across the financial year, there was rushed expenditure in the last quarter and especially in March, with several departments releasing 100 percent money towards certain initiatives only in March. These included scholarships, SCP and TSP funds among others, according to the report.